An optimization approach to business buyer choice sets: How many suppliers should be included?

In many new or repeat purchasing situations, business buyers must decide how many suppliers to consider (a “choice set”) in determining which supplier(s) to actually buy from or contract with. This paper develops an optimization approach to determining the size of the choice set, taking into consideration buyer utility and search and evaluation costs. A theoretical model is developed for both one-time and repeat purchase situations. The model is estimated using empirical data received from bids received for procurement auctions. In these auctions, suppliers provide bids for steel pipe based on two product attributes (price and delivery time). Model sensitivity to small changes in parameters is also tested.     

Purchasing power parity in ASEAN-5 countries: revisit with cross-sectional dependence and structural breaks

This paper re-examines the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for a panel of ASEAN-5 countries. The panel unit root and cointegration tests, which incorporate cross-sectional dependence and multiple structural breaks, are innovatively used for testing the PPP hypothesis. We could not find evidence that supports the existence of a long-run equilibrium between the relative price ratio and the nominal exchange rate for the whole period. Nevertheless, there is evidence of a cointegrating relationship for the post-crisis period. Our finding implies that a flexible exchange rate regime is suitable for the individual ASEAN countries.     

Effects of Label on Consumer Preferences: Focus on Hawaiian Avocado Industry

This study examines market challenges facing a local agriculture industry in a small island setting. Examination of the Hawai‘i local avocado industry indicates labeling can address the product information gap between consumers and producers, improve market share, and increase import substitution by local products. Currently, local avocados occupy only 33% of market share, compared with 67% captured by imports. Consumer preferences among local labeled, local unlabeled, and imported avocados were analyzed using multinomial logistic regression. Statistical results showed that labels influence consumers’ decisions to buy local or imported avocados, and their preferences were also influenced by sociodemographic variables, avocado characteristics, and purchasing behavior. Key market segments to target and policy implications are also discussed.     

Balance sheet conservatism and audit reporting conservatism

Financial reports are prepared on a going‐concern (GC) basis rather than a liquidation basis even when companies are highly distressed. This allows distressed companies to report book values of assets that greatly exceed their liquidation values, implying a lack of conservatism in the balance sheet. We argue that auditors issue going‐concern opinions in order to warn investors about this lack of balance sheet conservatism. This argument leads to two testable hypotheses. First, for companies that are at risk of bankruptcy, auditors are more likely to issue GC opinions when the book values of assets under the GC assumption are high relative to the expected liquidation values of assets (i.e., when the GC assumption causes the balance sheet to lack conservatism). Second, for companies that enter bankruptcy, the issuance of a prior GC opinion has predictive information content with respect to the wedge between the book values of assets and the future liquidation values of those same assets. Our results strongly support both hypotheses. The findings are important because they indicate that conservative audit reporting helps to compensate for a lack of conservatism in the balance sheet, which arises because the GC assumption permits the book values of assets to exceed their liquidation values.     

Tax avoidance and ex ante cost of capital

This study examines the association between tax avoidance and ex ante cost of equity capital. Based on prior research, we develop two proxies for investors’ expectations of tax avoidance and explore whether deviations from those expectations result in higher ex ante cost of equity capital. We find that the ex ante cost of equity capital increases with tax avoidance that is either below or above investor expectations and that the increase is larger for tax avoidance that exceeds investors’ expectations. We then examine whether firms that alter their future tax avoidance exhibit a lowering of their ex ante cost of equity capital and find that tax avoidance decreases (increases) from the prior year for firms that were above (below) investors’ expectations in the prior year. These results are consistent with the trade‐off suggested by the Scholes and Wolfson framework and reinforce the notion that balancing tax benefits and non‐tax costs is an important feature of firms’ tax planning.     

上市公司“MD&A”信息质量评价模型——基于政府监管的视角

管理层讨论与分析(Management’s Discussion and Analysis,MDA)作为财务报表的有益补充,因其能够有助于增强信息披露的针对性和有效性而越来越受到信息使用者的关注。针对我国MDA信息质量不高的现状和评价体系不尽完善的情况,总结和吸收前人的研究成果,合理界定MDA信息质量特征。在此基础上,充分考虑MDA信息的生成机制和外部评价结果,采用层次分析法,构建适合我国上市公司MDA信息质量评价模型。     

A new assessment of economic integration in East Asia: Application of an industry-specific G-PPP model

It is well known that intra-industry trade and cross-border production networks have promoted economic growth and regional integration in East Asia. However, regional supply and production chains may have been formed differently across industries, reflecting different degrees and a different scope of regional economic linkages at an industry level. This paper makes a threefold contribution. First, to assess industry-level differences, this study adopts the generalized purchasing power parity (G-PPP) model using industry-specific producer prices. Second, the momentum threshold autoregressive (M-TAR) model is employed to allow for possible nonlinearity arising from the dynamic nature of regional economic growth and development. Third, the Granger causality test is also conducted to assess whether regional economies have autonomously integrated. The empirical results reveal that economic integration has progressed more autonomously in the electrical industry, as well as in the transportation equipment industry, as China and the ASEAN countries have become the final destination markets for finished products in these two industries.     

Trade-off relationship between modern agriculture and biodiversity: Heavy consolidation work has a long-term negative impact on plant species diversity

Human-driven land-use changes often cause a decline in biodiversity. Although traditional agricultural practices maintained biodiversity at high levels, recent land-use changes may have negative consequences on species composition. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that land consolidation, which is a major recent land-use change in agricultural areas, decreases plant species diversity over the long term (the so-called negative legacy). To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationships between consolidated areas and the occurrence of threatened plant species across Japan and at the prefecture scale. Twenty-three threatened plant species were selected, all of which were formerly common. Our results show that areas containing records of threatened plant species rarely experienced consolidation at whole-country and prefectural scales. Breakdown analysis showed that unconsolidated agricultural areas contained significantly more threatened species than consolidated agricultural areas. These results suggest that threatened plant species require unconsolidated agricultural areas (i.e., these species could not grow in consolidated areas). Thus, we propose that consolidation history could be used as an indicator of the potential for biodiversity recovery. We also suggest that consolidated agricultural areas should be used for food production rather than for the restoration of biodiversity, for reasons of cost efficiency.     

Liquidity,information, strategic trading in an electronic order book: New insights from the European carbon markets

The electronic limit order book (LOB hereafter) has rapidly become the primary way of trading European carbon assets over the 4 years of the EU ETS programme (2008–2012). In this first attempt of examining the informational content of an electronic order book, we evidence that order flow imbalances have a moderate capacity to predict short term price changes. However, we find that both LOB slope and immediacy costs help to forecast quote improvements and volatility in the next 30 min. Further, we explain why informed trading is highly influential and show that it consists in mixing order splitting strategies and posting fleeting orders once the asymmetric information is reduced (Rosu, 2009). Overall, the consolidated status of the order book mirrors a high level of market uncertainty and a low degree of informational efficiency. In this way, strategic trading can in itself explain some of order book properties, independently of the degree of traders’ sophistication and market competition.     

论贵州旅游产品的开发——从旅游心理角度

分析旅游产品及其心理学价值,从心理学的角度探讨了旅游的心理与行为意义,并尝试以旅游消费心理发展的新动向为出发点,以旅游产品为对象,对贵州旅游产品的开发的进行心理学的思考。